Sorority
by Starla
Summary: Buffy waxes sentimental about Dawn and her childhood.


Sorority

Title: Sorority 1/1 

Author: Starla

Disclaimer: Joss Whedon and associates own all.

Improv #19 : noble -- damn -- still -- struggle 

Rating: PG

Spoilers: Dawn stuff, before she found out she was the key. Some other stuff, probably. Summary: Buffy ponders her li'l sis' existence. Unbeta'd. 

Feedback: Yes, please, please, please. My inbox is all empty and forlorn.

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When she was young, Dawnie was in a play.

At the time, I rolled my eyes. I begged and pleaded not to go. I tried to blackmail my mother - the cry of every child, the world over, the tremble of every bottom lip and the filling of every pair of eyes with all-too-purposeful tears - but to no avail, and I sat, angrily, 12 years old and above it all, watching my sister play the beautiful princess. Watching her be saved by her noble knight, a kid with bright orange hair and funny ears, who, even in costume, had his asthma ventilator hanging around his neck. I watched the kid blush as Dawn kissed him on the cheek in the final scene of the play. Dawn complained about having to do it for weeks, but I have a feeling that the little boy had a crush on her, and would always remember it.

I hated being there, at the time. I was moody, and angry. Now, I'd give anything for it to be real.

I can't believe my baby sister hasn't always been my baby sister. I can't believe I never dragged her around our living room by her arms, giving her carpet burn that took weeks to heal. I can't believe she never cut my favourite china doll's hair, giving pretty little Delilah a mullet cut. It's not possible that she didn't sit on the sidelines and watch me skate because she was too afraid to venture out on the ice. 

This is my life, my childhood, part of who I am. Would I be different, without Dawnie? Would I be a better person? A bad person, even? What really happened, and what did the monks implant in my brain?

I'll never know. I'll never remember my childhood. I'll never know if I was ever really happy.

I don't think I possibly could have been. For all that Dawn annoys me, I can't imagine living without her. I don't know if a life without loving her, without being her big sister, would be a life worth living. 

It would be lonely.

I remember, when we were little, before Mom and Dad started their incessant parental deathmatches, they had a friend. A friend who gave me a real wig. I don't remember his name now, just that I always thought of him in connection with the big bad wolf. He was tall and wiry, with small, squinty eyes and bushy eyebrows. Dark sideburns twisted their way down his face and neck. 

Whenever he would come over, I'd go hide in my room after a few panicked sentences of hello. I was about 10, at the time, and felt silly being so terrified, but I couldn't seem to help myself. I'd curl up on my bed and read, and not think about the fact that he was outside, waiting to hunt me down, waiting to eat me and hurt me and speak in that voice of his that made me shiver. 

Dawn was the first to catch on to the fact that he creeped me out. At first, she just stared at me in puzzlement, because I was her big, brave sister, who wasn't afraid of anything. I was the girl that defended her against the school bully, the one who had a scathing reply to anything you could have thrown at me. I was cool, and calm, and collected, even at that age...but that guy, that guy was the scariest thing in my life. 

She wasn't used to me being afraid of anything, except perhaps Mom and Dad, especially when they fought, which wasn't as often in those days. Dawn was confused, but she used to come in and sit with me, anyway, and keep me company while I hid from the big bad wolf. I didn't understand it, but she made me feel safe. 

When I became the Slayer, when I was damned to a life of demons, of darkness, I used to turn to Dawn for normality. I'd bicker with her, and take her shopping, and give her coffee even though I knew Mom had forbidden her to drink it, because I wanted to feel like her sister again. Dawn was the only one who didn't look at me like I was a felon, or a freak. She never asked me if I was in a gang, and she never checked my arm for needle marks. To her, I was still just Buffy, the older sister who irritated her...and she was just Dawn, my slightly nerdy younger sister. She always had her nose buried in a book, and before I because the Slayer, I used to tease her about it. 

Afterwards, I understood the appeal of getting lost in another world.

It's a struggle for me to cope with this newfound information about her. Some days I look at her and want to cry, because I'm confused. Because she belongs to me, to us, and she always has...and now it's like she's been taken away a little. Now her future is as uncertain as mine is.

It's hard for me. It'd be impossible for her. Which is why I can't tell her. It's why I have to protect her.

She would be mad, I think, if she found out what I was hiding from her. She didn't talk to me for a week after she found out I was the Slayer, because it was a big secret, and we'd been getting close, new town and all, and I hadn't told her.

The story of how she found out about me isn't really as dramatic as it could have been. She wasn't kidnapped by long-clawed demons. I didn't save her from vampires. She didn't open my cupboard and find my swords and crossbows and stakes.

She just heard me talking to Angel. Teasing him about robbing the cradle, his reply to which was to point out that I was robbing the grave. Confusing to her, sure, but that wasn't what told her that her sister was a 'superhero, complete with freaky powers', as she put it. 

Actually, it was when we started talking about patrol, and the weirdass demons that had been showing up. Angel looked at me in concern, and asked me...

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"You're sure you can handle all this?" 

His eyes studied my face intently, and he reached one hand to brush at my hair lightly, "I mean, it's getting pretty hectic."

"I have help," I said, grinning at him. "None of the others ever did."

"You're not like the others. And don't change the subject."

I rolled my eyes. "I'm the Slayer, Angel. The killing demons thing is sorta inevitable."

"Still - " he started to say, and then the words paused in his throat, and he cocked his head to the side, listening intently to something. He held his hand up, gesturing for me to be still.

There's someone outside the door," he said, leaning in close to me. I fought off a wave of dizzyness at his nearness. 

"Oh," I responded, and then I realised that that was a problem. My family were out. "Oh!"

Together, we moved stealthily towards the bedroom door, hoping that whoever was out there hadn't been alerted to our surprise attack.

I pulled open the door, ready to punch the intruder -- 

And found Dawn...but you'd probably already guessed that.

She stared up at me with wide eyes. 

"What's a Slayer?"

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I explained. She screamed when she noticed Angel's reflection. Or lack of it, whatever. I explained that, too. She did some glaring. I made her promise not to tell Mom. 

She didn't speak to me for a week. One of the loneliest weeks of my life, and I've had some lonely weeks.

Eventually, though, things went back to the way they were before...pretty much. She looked tense and worried whenever I left the house at night, but waved and cracked jokes about not doing anything she wouldn't do, anyway. She made me tell her about how to protect herself, but wouldn't go out on her own at night. She started to tell me things again, and I started to confide in her. She even started to trust Angel again. 

Angel, she adored, because they both had that whole art and book thing going on. I think he probably found conversations with her way more interesting that the ones he had with me. He, in turn, adored her, enough to make me go all green sometimes.

Xander, she adored even more. I didn't realise she had a crush on him until my senior year, but once I did, I thought of the groping he and Cordelia did, and got very tense. 

I didn't care if she was like 12 and he'd never even considered her in that way, I yelled at him, promising to inflict some major bodily harm if he ever so much as *touched* my baby sister. 

According to Willow, that was way irrational.

In fact, now that I think about it, Dawn got on with most of my friends, which is more than I can say for most little sisters. Sometimes she started off a little frostily - with Cordy, Anya, and Riley, especially - but she always came around in the end. Except with Faith. She never, ever trusted Faith.

Smart girl. Wish I was that smart. 

She's my little sister. She's my blood, she's my bones, my flesh. I don't know how to think of her as just a big blob of energy. I don't know how to help her through this.

I'm going to protect her from this as long as possible. She won't know she's the key until she really has to.

I'm her big sister. It's my job to take care of her. 

-- 


End file.
